Posts about Ridership

WMATA is again estimating that its operating costs will far outpace revenues. To close the gap, the agency is considering closing several stations during off-peak hours, decreasing how often trains run, and cutting some bus routes.

Under WMATA's new proposal, stations with red dots could only get service during rush hour. Image from WMATA.

The official budget proposal for FY2018 won't come out until November, but a draft of a presentation that WMATA staff will give to the Board of Directors on Thursday gives some insight into big changes the agency is considering in order to close an estimated $275 million budget gap.

One option would eliminate service to 20 low-ridership stations during off-peak hours (midday, evening, and weekends). Many of these stations are located east of the Anacostia River, but White Flint and Tysons are also on the list.

Another option would eliminate service for bus routes with the highest operating costs per rider. One of the routes listed is Metro's new bus rapid transit service, Metroway, which runs largely in dedicated bus lanes with bigger, better bus stops.

Some other options on the table include cutting more employees, increasing bus and rail fares, increasing peak-period rail headways from every six minutes to every eight, making weekend service less frequent, and asking Maryland, Virginia, and DC to contribute more funding.

These are bleak choices, but absent an infusion of funding, WMATA has to balance its budget somehow. What do you think it should do?

Ridership on both Metrorail and Metrobus dropped off in a big way over the past year. Possible reasons include cheaper gas and a struggling economy, but those probably aren't substitutes for two staples: safety and reliability issues.

Photo by Kevin Harber on Flickr.

According to WAMU's Martin Di Caro, overall Metro ridership (both rail and bus) fell by to 321 million trips, or about six percent, during the 2015 fiscal year (WMATA's fiscal year runs from July-June). Rail ridership declined even more steeply than the system as a whole, falling seven percent.

All images from WMATA unless otherwise noted.

With bus ridership dropping too, it's apparent that commuters displaced by SafeTrack did not turn to Metrobus as an alternative. These declines compound other factors that have affected ridership, says DiCaro:

Demographic changes, the rise of telework, the proliferation of transport alternatives such as Uber or Capital Bikeshare, the economic downturn and reductions in federal spending, constant weekend track work over the past five years—all have combined with consistently poor rush hour service to drain Metrorail ridership.

Experts disagree about the main factors affecting transit ridership

Last week, a George Mason professor who focuses on policy and transit, a top official at the American Public Transportation Association, and planners from within Metro briefed Metro's board of directors, which is preparing for budget discussions, on the reasons for the decline.

Their explanations for the drop varied.

George Mason Professor of Public Policy and Regional Transit Stephen Fuller presented a handful of factors affecting Metro's ridership. "Levels and quality of service" topped his list:

APTA Vice President of Policy Art Guzzetti listed lower gas prices and fare prices as the top two factors potentially affecting ridership:

Metro's Managing Director of Planning Shyam Kannan laid out the agency's analysis of ridership. Among the largest factors in Metro's own theories about declining ridership are the economy and the rise of Uber and bicycling as alternate commuting methods. Those, however, are outside of WMATA's control.

What WMATA can control are service levels and reliability. That is what WMATA believes will bring back ridership.

Quicker, more frequent, and more reliable service would encourage people to ride more often:

Correction: The original version of this post overlooked a few of Metro's slides. While Kannan did discuss a number of factors that explain lower ridership, his presentation centered on safety and reliability as the top drivers of ridership. The original also said that Metro ridership has dropped by 321 million trips, when in fact it has dropped to 321 million trips.

Make buses great again: Bus ridership is down in DC and many other cities. A New York campaign thinks it can buck the trend by rethinking routes, offering well-spaced stops, and improving urban design with dedicated bus lanes. (Slate) (Comment)

Another Purple Line delay?: A federal judge says that he thinks Metro's safety problems could hurt Purple Line ridership, and may order a six-month delay to study it. FTA and MTA officials emphasized that short-term issues with Metro won't impact long-term Purple Line projections. (Post) (Comment)

When the Silver Line opened in July of 2014, the West Falls Church Metro station took a huge ridership hit. But overall, the Silver Line meant more people riding Metro.

Graph by the author. Click for a larger version.

The chart above is based on the ridership data released by Metro in March. The stations noted here are West Falls Church and the five new Silver Line stations, with data coming from AM peak entries during typical weekdays.

In the span of two months, from a peak in June 2014 to a low in August 2014, West Falls Church station saw its average ridership drop by almost 70% with the opening of the Silver Line! While this appears to be bad news for West Falls Church and Metro, that isn't the case if you look at all six stations.

It looks like when the Silver Line opened, West Falls Church riders immediately switched to stations closer to their homes. That, or rather than driving to West Falls Church, they started driving to Wiehle, the only new station with parking (it could be a combination of both, of course).

Changes to bus routes in the corridor probably had a lot to do with the drop in entries at West Falls. When the Silver Line opened, 62 bus routes got modifications. 11 were eliminated altogether, and major feeder routes operated by Fairfax Connector, Loundon County, and Washington Flyer moved their terminus from West Falls to Wiehle Avenue.

Overall, the Silver Line and the bus service changes that accompanied it attracted new riders to Metro. This is evidenced in the the uptick in the grand total entries among these six stations. It's likely that a lot of new riders are commuters from Fairfax and Loudoun County, where Metro was previously unaccessible.

A goal of public transit is to offer people better access to transportation. The opening of the Silver Line made travel for existing Metro customers easier by putting stations closer to their homes, and also attracted new riders by offering an alternative to driving and carpooling.

Last month, WMATA's PlanItMetro blog released another batch of detailed ridership data. We used it to visualize how many people enter each Metro station over the course of a normal weekday.

Entrances at Red Line stations throughout the day. All graphics by the authors.

For each Metro line, we made an animated gif that cycles through fifteen minute intervals from 4:30am to midnight. Each dot on the line represents the average number of riders who entered that station during that time interval on weekdays in October 2015.

Blue Line.

Orange Line.

Since a lot of people use Metro to commute, many riders enter suburban stations in Virginia and Maryland in the morning. This pattern reverses during the evening rush hour when most riders board trains at downtown stations.

Yellow Line.

Green Line.

Not all stations follow this trend, though. For example, Ballston has strong ridership during both rush hours since the neighborhood is home to offices and residential buildings alike.

Between 2011 and 2015, the average number of riders that entered a Metro station dropped from 8,500 per station to 7,400. During the same time, the only Metro station to see a big jump in ridership was NoMa-Gallaudet. I graphed these numbers, and more, after Metro recently released five years' worth of data.

Ridership at Union Station in 2011 vs 2015. All graphics by the author.

Comparing ridership from 2011 to 2015, I see five main ways to categorize changes at individual stations:

No change, or only a subtle change in ridership

Pronounced decline in ridership

Pronounced increase in ridership

Silver Line-related ridership changes

Seasonal or weather-related ridership changes

In order to help illustrate these patterns, I graphed the data and pulled out some of the most interesting stations. For all plots below, monthly ridership in 2011 is shown as red squares, and ridership for 2015 as blue crosses.

1. No change, or only a subtle change in ridership

Average weekday ridership at Branch Avenue, Glenmont, and Largo Town Center stations in 2011 vs 2015.

Many of the stations in the system appeared to show either no decrease in ridership, or only a slight one. Around 55-60 stations fit into this category, or around 60 percent of the Metrorail system.

The combined effect of all the subtle declines near the edges gets sharper when you look at bigger drop offs at the system's core stations, including Metro Center, L'Enfant Plaza, and Gallery Place. In total, around 20 of the 91 total Metro stations fit into this category.

Average weekday ridership at Pentagon, Pentagon City, and Crystal City stations in 2011 vs 2015.

All stations in south Arlington saw declines in ridership. What is it about that area that has changed in the last four years? Perhaps this is an area that WMATA should focus efforts to boost ridership? Or perhaps success of the Metroway bus service between Alexandria and Arlington has shifted passengers away from the rail system?

3. Pronounced increase in ridership

Average weekday ridership at NoMa - Gallaudet University station in 2011 vs 2015.

The only station to see substantial increases in ridership over this time period was NoMa. The station saw ridership increase from an average of 7,400 riders per weekday to over 9,000/weekday over the period of this data, an increase of over 20 percent. This is not surprising given the amount of development that has occurred in this area around the station.

In this context, a "substantial increase" in ridership is based on an increase of 1,000 average weekday riders over the course of the entire year of data. This helps show that the ridership change isn't temporary or a short seasonal change, but one that will affect the station long-term.

4. Silver Line related ridership changes

Average weekday ridership at West Falls Church, Vienna, and Wiehle-Reston East stations in 2011 vs 2015.

The opening of the Silver Line, as you might guess, greatly impacted the end of the Orange Line stations. You can see Wiehle picking up some of those declines.

Average weekday ridership at West Falls Church declined by almost 75 percent when the Silver Line opened. This shift is due in part to people using the five new stations that opened, as well as the bus route changes that shifted many away from departing/arriving West Falls Church. The five new Silver Line stations carried an average weekday ridership of just under 3,000 people across all of 2015.

You can always tell when it's baseball season by looking at ridership at Navy Yard-Ballpark station. 2015 was a better season for the Nats than 2011, which might be why the former had higher ridership.

Smithsonian station always shows when it's cherry blossom time (noted by the sharp increase in average ridership in April), tourist season (increased ridership during the summer months), and the 4th of July (sharp increase in average ridership for the month of July). Arlington Cemetery similarly shows average ridership increases over the summer when the weather is nice, and decreases to under 400 average riders per weekday during the cold season (also when the station closes earlier), although to a lesser extent.

The stations selected are only representatives from across the whole system. You can find plots showing the entire system and other more granular data here. What else have you found in the data that's interesting?

WMATA's PlanItMetro blog has released a trove of data on Metro station use. Here's one snippet: All 91 stations, ranked by the average number of riders who entered the faregates each weekday in February, 2016.

Farragut West, the 5th busiest station. Photo by the author.

Union Station 29,371

Gallery Place 25,537

Farragut North 24,597

Metro Center 24,330

Farragut West 20,917

Foggy Bottom 20,121

L'Enfant Plaza 19,343

Dupont Circle 18,653

Pentagon 14,584

McPherson Square 14,340

What jumps out to you, both from this list and the rest of WMATA's data? Here's the rest of the list:

Walmart has turned many towns into high-dry food deserts, Nashville is considering its transit options, and Uber had to get creative to get insurance. Check out what's happening around the world in transportation, land use, and other related areas!

Music City moving: Nashville's transit authority is working to put forward a plan for developing transit. The most robust possibility would build new light rail, streetcars, and bus lines, and would cost $5.4 billion. The smallest plan, at $800 million, would focus on buses and the existing commuter rail line. (Nashville Tennessean)

Uber insurance: Uber as a ride hailing service might not exist if not for one of its employees convincing insurance agents to cover drivers. There's a lot of grey area in how to insure someone who is waiting for the app to connect them with a customer. (Buzz Feed News)

Build up for cars: As soon as cars came on the scene in cities, residents and businesses needed places to put them. In dense places, people put cars on elevators and stored vertically. These pictures show how that technology evolved from the 1920s to 1970s. (Mashable)

To live and ride in LA: Transit ridership has gone down in Los Angeles by 10% from the high reached in 2006. Officials are wondering how to attract more high-income riders, and whether they should stick with current plans to build more bike and bus-only lanes. (Los Angeles Times)

Quote of the Week: "The government is one group that doesn't get to choose its customers. We want to make it work for everyone." Jennifer Pahlka, who started Code for America to help cities work better with their citizens. (San Francisco Chronicle)